the shop

here are some pics of the new shop in cherrywood that we have opened... for more about annie blackberry go here.

magic llama

there's a mysterious magic llama for sale on trademe at the moment. it gives the owner a number of benefits including invisibility and, somewhat paradoxically, attractiveness.

realistically, i should be keeping this discovery under wraps, but i'm a generous soul who only hopes that the llama will go to a home where it is most needed.

the golden llama can be found here.

on demand

over the last year or so, i've really got into watching 'tvnz on demand' - free streaming video from tvnz. in particular it's excellent for watching the material which tvnz itself produces. since going digital and introducing its freeview tv channels, tvnz has found a home for some of the more obscure special interests programs that it makes - including two of my favourites: 'the gravy' and 'new artland'.

i don't have freeview (we've got sky instead) so for now i watch this content online.

it started with discovering 'the gravy' - a show in which the hosts go out and interview creative new zealanders - the range and scope is vast. it is shot beautifully and uses nz music as its soundtrack. with tvnz on demand, i can watch the episode whenever i like, so once i ran out of new episodes (we are currently between seasons - i hope) i decided to check out 'new artland'.

'new artland' is hosted by chris knox and each week features a different artist. the show follows the artist from concept to completion of an artwork especially commissioned for the episode. excellent stuff.

tvnz on demand has recently relaunched, integrating itself into the overall tvnz website. so, here are the links to the two shows:

the gravy: here
new artland: here

this week i was particularly interested in an episode in which a video artist went to a faceless apartment complex in mt eden and interviewed the residents before projecting those interviews onto the outside of the complex. very cool concept that rang my 'safe little world' bells.

star wars news episode IX: star trek

the triumphant return of star wars news: news from the dark nether regions of star wars fandom. this time in celebration of the release of the new star trek movie. this footage was captured over san francisco...



this edition of star wars news was brought to you in association with the quote: "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?" - Yoda

creative juices 1

two almost completely unrelated things have caught my imagination in the last week. sometimes something you see or hear or read pushes your imagination that much further on - gives you a little kickstart...

1. the bone people by keri hulme. a new zealand book that won the booker prize for fiction in 1985 and has consistently been on nz bestseller lists ever since. i studied nz literature at university but somehow missed reading this. the only thing i knew about it was its reputation - i knew nothing about its plot etc and that is still a mystery to me that's unfolding as i read. i'm only a few pages in but what i've read has captured me with its beautiful writing, unconventional narrative styles and a host of other things that might be ruined if i try to put them into words...


2. rip - a remix manifesto. watch this thought-provoking film for free. a documentary about remix culture and the things threatening it...

here's the first chapter, the rest is here...

music video

a very nice bit of video using old 8mm stuff by jamie strange. he tells me that he was thinking of me when he put the video together because i love old footage. he's right:

droppin' kiwi style

darn there's some nice kiwi music floating around these days.

on friday night anna and her sister and friend and i went over to hamilton for anna's birthday outing. we cruised into hamilton on the weekend of the V8 street races. we were in 'boganvillia' (not to be confused with the island in the solomon's group or the red-flowering creeper of the same name). at each intersection in town rock poured from pubs while blokes in high-waisted tapered jeans (motor racing shirts tucked in) wandered the streets in various states of inebriation checking out pit girls in outfits described by the female occupants of our car as 'underwear'.

our destination was the casino and the slot machines. i always find casinos pretty surreal places - so much money leaving people's pockets, surrounded by gaudy glittering lights. expressions range from out and out excitement to tired wan resignation. i feel an intriguing mix of sickness and fascination.

anyway, on the few occasions that i visit a casino it's always my aim to beat the house, even if just by a little. in the event my $20 capital grew to $30 (twice). unable to exceed that $10 profit i gave up trying.

all this is an unnecessarily long story to say that because i didn't lose my money at the casino i had some extra disposable income in my pocket today. unable to think of a better self-indulgent outlet, i decided to download some tracks from amplifier.co.nz. (i thought of using it at itunes but amplifier looks less like 'the man' and i imagine that the artists see more of the revenue from there.)

i came away with 11 nz tracks which proved to form a rather cool / crunchy / dubby / trippy / catchy / stomping / quirky mix. i list the tracks below with glowing recommendation:

4 tracks from sola rosa's latest album 'Get It Together':

Lady Love Featuring Bajka
I've Tried Ways Featuring Serocee
Turn Around Featuring Iva Lamkum
Love Alone Featuring Spikey Tee

the p-money single:

Everything feat. Vince Harder

all 7 tracks from the kora remix album 'Kora! Kora! Kora! The Cabaret Voltaire Versions':

Skankenstein (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Pop Your Bubble (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Flow (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
On My Mind (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Burning (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Crazy Things (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)
Burning Reprise (Cabaret Voltaire Remix)

all this is evidence of good things happening in nz music, especially when you consider every one of these tracks is a collaboration - and in some cases these collaborations are transglobal (with appearances by german and british artists).

art (or 'why you hate art')

three comments about art that i stumbled across this morning. the first from the website 'new math' by craig damrauer (via ffffound)...


the second is from the website 'but does it float' curated by folkert & atley, a statement which reads...

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery"

the third from an article about the psychology of why creationism is attractive (via aaron). the article isn't about art at all but provides a quote which fits rather nicely with the question of why people, in general, struggle with contemporary art and poetry:

"According to [University of Michigan psychologist Margaret] Evans and other psychologists, including Deborah Kelemen from Boston University, there’s a very specific cognitive glitch that invades our rationalist thought whenever we’re pondering the subject of life’s origins, something those who do research in this area refer to as “teleo-functional thinking” (reasoning about the functional purpose of an entity or object in question). When scratching our heads over an artifact—with the end product before us, asking ourselves how it came to be—these scientists find that we tend to start off by trying to deduce what it’s meant for."

while this tendency might actually have the potential to make a person study the art piece until they find meaning, combine that tendency with a short attention-span (and the fact that much art evades one specific meaning), and the viewer quickly gives up or disregards the piece rather than investigating it more deeply.

on the headphones: 'part 12' by rhian sheehan, from the album 'standing in silence'.

standing in silence

i rush to write this even before i've finished listening to all the tracks - nz electronic musician rhian sheehan's new album 'standing in silence' is a triumph.

i've long been a fan of ambient electronic music probably since it subliminally forced its way into my young subconscious via endless hours of my brother playing the likes of tangerine dream, vangelis, jean michel jarre and other synth geniuses.

anyway, in recent years i've developed a distinct taste for artists like m83, mogwai, sigur ros, mum etc often from the chilly climes of the northern hemisphere. i've always liked rhian sheehan too, but not this much...

his new release channels a whole lot of great stuff, and i can hear a bit of mum in there and sigur ros, maybe a touch of vangelis. it also reminds me of the soundtrack for the aussie film 'somersault' by decoder ring.

to make it that much more tempting, you'll find it on itunes for NZ$11.99 in a non-drm high bitrate form (also on emusic). 14 tracks of absolute goodness for 12 bucks!

HSR safelittleworld remix

the second piece in my remix project.

some comments about the piece: The 'cut-up' methodology for this piece was more extreme than it was for the Kinkade piece, and the 'remixing' more extensive. I read through the Steiner Rice volume and wrote down individual lines that appealed to me - extracting words from their rhyming couplet context. The role of personal aesthetic was even more evident here than in the Kinkade - as lines that resonated for me may not resonate for another reader. Having written a fair bit of poetry myself, I couldn't help feeling slightly guilty about removing the lines from where Steiner Rice had placed them. But I came across an interesting footnote in the collection I was reading: "This poem combines favorite lines from several other Helen Steiner Rice poems, a practice Mrs Rice sometimes used when pressured to produce new verse on demand."

Using some of the lines I had selected, I reworked them into a new poem, placing lines together with a kind of conceptual flow, and thereby creating meaning by placing concepts side by side. Graphical treatment of the resulting poem had a lot to do with typography. I further fragmented the lines by placing them as broken parts across the page. I liked the idea of having certain parts of the text blocked out. There is a mystery to blocked out, crossed out, twinked out text - it sparks a kind of desire in the reader as you look for hidden words and meaning. Working with the Steiner Rice material and reading her biography, I couldn't help feeling there was powerful subtext operating in her poetry, hidding behind the greeting card rhymes and sentimentality.

In an urban context, graffiti is also blocked out by city officials - as can be seen, in fact, in the photograph I chose for this piece.

To create the text to be blocked out in the poem I used 'latin' place-holder text and then crossed it out with a very heavy typographic line. In the event I actually quite liked the poem with it's 'nonsense' 'latin' interjections, for example "all my dreams were built around you dui te dunt / alit lobor augait iure i send a loving dart" - but kept with the blocked out text concept instead.

The final visable text reads:

but it is also my cathedral

all my dreams were built around you
i send a loving dart
built on ideals of
girls and boys
in lovely rapturous surprise
God,
grant rebirth to man’s slumbering soul
a mere interlude of inflamed fascination
i’d like to be your shadow
across the years, we’ve met in dreams
but to keep the peace we must conquer the soul
become a seething sea of faces
the life he’s dreaming of
it’s the why and wherefore of infinite living
Christ is more than just a figure wrapped in ethereal glow
the comfort of transformation
so rest and relax and grow stronger
life is forever! death is a dream!

TK safelittleworld remix

so here's the first piece of the thomas kinkade and helen steiner rice remix project. see this post for a wider discussion about the two artists. the text down the side of this piece reads: "kinkade morning light safe little world remix 09".

some comments about this piece: Having searched through the Thomas Kinkade coffee-table book that I got from the library, I found a few pictures which I thought might work for the project. I tried out a few of these on photographs I'd taken of back alley walls - an 'urban setting'. At this point it was clear that personal aesthetics were going to play a part. I was choosing my source material for what looked good (to my eye). My piece would be a remix or collage where my personal taste would come to bear. The Kinkade component that I chose is from a painting called 'Morning Light'. Kinkade's caption for the piece reads, "In 'Morning Light', a flower garden becomes a fabulous canvas onto which the morning sun paints a glowing picture. Suffused through the mist, the light dazzles with subtle flashes of color."

I liked the juxtaposition of the brick wall with the urban alley wall, and the vivid colours with the muted tones of the photograph. Where others have subverted Kinkade, I tried to treat the material with more positivity, genuinely aiming to make the Kinkade element look its best in the context. I wasn't trying to make fun of it.

I overlaid the Kinkade part and 'degraded' it a bit and wrapped it around the window to make it blend and appear more like it was applied to the wall by some very talented urban artist. At the bottom of the picture though, the Kinkade part overlaps the curb so that in some ways it is still distinct from the wall itself.

tomorrow: the steiner rice piece.

the painter of light, the ambassador of sunshine vs safe little world, pt 1

Two of the most commercially successful artists of the American 20th century also happened to be Christians. Poet Helen Steiner Rice and painter Thomas Kinkade 'captured the hearts' of the American middleclass with a commercially viable artistic style that could be called something like 'Christian Romanticism' - a warm view of the world and humanity laced with Christian concepts.

Burgeois, trite, chocolate-box, sentimental, kitsch in the view of people that appreciate art and literature on the cutting edge, what Steiner Rice and Kinkade have produced is undeniably 'successful' in terms of sheer popularity.

I grew up surrounded by Christian pop culture, albeit removed from the USA. Our Sunday School and Bible-in-Schools classes were illustrated by flannelgraph and soft-focus poster images of woodlands overlaid by uplifting scripture verses. These illustrations were indicative of a machine that was (in the early 80s) already in full swing manufacturing product for a lucrative Christian market.

My first awareness of Helen Steiner Rice comes in the form of a memory of Mum buying greeting cards at the local news agent stationery shop. As a four year old (or so) I helpfully select a floral card from the rack for my mother's consideration. She looks inside, and with a definite air of something on the spectrum of repulsion says, "No, that's a Helen Steiner Rice card." My mother is clearly queasy about a type of poetry which I would later come to label 'doggeral', overly sentimental, and perhaps penned under the influence of Christianity tainted by humanism (that concept came from Mum). We did, however, have a collection of HSR's poems on our bookshelf at home - a gift, as I recall it - from a well-meaning friend of my mother's.

My concious awareness of Kinkade came later, after I had already grown up and been to university, after I had turned my back with disgust on Christian cliché and had gone off seeking after artforms that I felt engaged with Christian concepts in a more meaningful, grittier, cutting edge way; before then returning to kitsch Christian commercialism with a kind of curiosity touched with affection. In hindsight, I had probably seen his work before, but my attention was drawn to him sharply by a book called Making Contemporary Art: How Today's Artists Think and Work by Linda Weintraub. In this wide-ranging book, Weintraub had clearly decided that America's top-selling artist should be considered along with all the other artists more readily acceptable to the tastes of the art establishment. My interest was piqued.

In my own art, I had been looking for opportunities to critique the product of Christian commercialism that I had grown up with. I decided that a way to do this was to attempt a blending of the two bastions of Christian commercial art - Steiner Rice and Kinkade - with a style that I was personally working with - a gritty urban context. I wanted to see what would become of their work if I took it, 'remixed' it, and reimagined it a context removed from the comfortable living rooms of Bible Belt America.

In the event, the conceptual side of the project has probably outweighed the artistic merit and weight of the finished product. The more I thought about the project the more it formed a conceptual grid of ideas in my mind - most of them probably impossible to make explicit in the art itself without some kind of accompanying document.

I started out by doing some research to learn a bit more about the artists and also find the material that I would 'sample' for my remix. A coffee-table biography of Kinkade, illustrated with large colour reproductions, was easy to find at the local library, as was the collected works of Steiner Rice.

Thomas Kinkade is self-styled and promoted as 'the painter of light' - interesting when compared with the fact that Helen Steiner Rice was known as 'the ambassador of sunshine'. The research lent some interesting insights into each artist.

Steiner Rice

Steiner Rice was born in 1900 and died in 1981 - a life and career span that takes in all the turmoil of the 20th century. Her work was in marketing for an electric light company and then later for Gibson Art - a greeting card manufacturer. When the greeting card editor at Gibson died suddenly in the mid-1930s, Steiner Rice took over the job, and so the mass output of her verse began. When the stock market crashed in 1929, her husband (a banker) descended into depression and never recovered - taking his own life in 1932. Having been touched by this event and some of the other dramatic events of the 1900s, one thing that is noticeable about her poetry when it is read in collected form is that her subject matter is not always light and airy. She writes about grief, death and winter, but nearly always with a hopeful twist appropriate for a greeting card. What is also notable is that regardless of her subject matter, her style is always the same.

An advertising poem she wrote to promote the use of electricity in the home:

The Happiness of Housekeeping

Your room shines out in splendour,
No dirt or dust is seen,
Because the rugs within your house
Are bright and Hoover-clean.

A poem that deals with her own death:

When I Must Leave You

When I must leave you for a little while,
Please go on bravely with a gallant smile
And for my sake and in my name,
Live on and do all things, the same -
Spend not your life in empty days,
But fill each waking hour in useful ways -
Reach out your hand in comfort and in cheer,
And I in turn will comfort you and hold you near.

Helen Steiner Rice’s books of inspirational poetry have sold nearly seven million copies.

Thomas Kinkade

Kinkade was born in 1958. Having started as an art student at University of California at Berkeley, he dropped out after two years and eventually published a guide to sketching which sold well. He hit upon a popular style of painting which sold extremely well in galleries across California and he eventually formed his own company, Media Arts Group Inc. The paintings are sold through mail-order and dedicated franchises, and are available in formats ranging from 'originals' (hand painted copies signed by Kinkade) to posters and calendars.

Meanwhile, from 1994-1997, Russian artists Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a research company as part of a fascinating conceptual art project to conduct interviews to find out what ordinary people most want to see in a painting. The research was conducted across several nations, and then Melamid and Komar painted the pictures that people most wanted to see (according to the resulting statistics). To summarise their findings, people most want to see landscapes, hills, a tree, a big lake, they like the colour blue, they want to see deer, families and George Washington (I assume that last one is influenced by American data). 88% of Americans surveyed favour outdoor scenes over any other representation.

Interestingly, quite separately to Kinkade, they have arrived at a rather fitting description of Kinkade's work (although I've never seen this fact mentioned elsewhere). The genius of Kinkade was hitting on the formula without the research. And so, it is estimated (by Kinkade's own company) that 1 in 20 American homes have a Kinkade print. Kinkade is reported to have earned $53 million for his artistic work in the period 1997 to May 2005.

Melamid & Komar:

Kinkade:

In rough form here are some of the things that I wanted to experiment with in my project:

• commercial art tested out in a non-commercial space
• idealised sentiments tested out in an unideal context
• 'Christian Romanticism' remixed into an 'unromantic' context
• a test of Christian culture in the 'marketplace' - the commercial marketplace and the 'marketplace' in the sense that evangelicals talk about it as the place we live and work
• if the work of these two artists is in fact 'beautiful' then they are being given a chance to 'beautify' an 'unbeautiful' space
• testing work designed for a refined suburban context in the back alleys of an urban / suburban setting
• contrasting the aesthetics of urban / street art with the aesthetics of popular art - both are 'art of the people'

That's the background, next up my pictures...

black out!

t-shirt

a superb 'flight of the conchords' tshirt that all you ex-pat, oeing kiwis may wish to invest in - will save time with casual enquirers... [available here].

mash

i was just thinking how much i like mashups: "a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another. In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as "ultimate post-modern pop song[s]" or "'culture jamming in its purest form'". [wikipedia]

here are some reasons i like them:
- they take the catchiest part of tune and use it shamelessly
- they use samples that you would need to have hundreds of millions of dollars to get clearance for
- they subvert the pop form
- they are all about enjoyment against money-making

here are some great examples so you can check it yourself...

- stereogum (in association with team9 - hey jono, they're aussies!) releases a free annual mashup compilation: vol3, vol2, vol1
- girl talk is one of the best-known mashup artists: his latest album is available on a pay what you want basis.
- and then there's 'bootie' - a mashup party in usa. each year they release a free 'best of' compilation: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.

just a slight word of warning: because rap vocals are easy to lift, a lot of mashups use them, and there is corresponding bad language in places.

movie still 5

two shots from the opening of the film 'sunset boulevard' (1950). the second one of the man floating in the pool provided a technical challenge for the camera crew without the use of underwater cameras. instead, they placed a mirror on the bottom of the pool, heated the water to a level that didn't effect the clarity of the reflection and then shot downwards from a platform, recording the image reflected in the mirror. all technical aspects aside, the shot is stunning and helped to make the film a classic...

camera fun

a couple of weeks ago i fulfilled a long ambition and purchased a new canon g10 camera. i've had my eye on the g series for ages, and to be honest this is the first really nice camera i've owned. the g10 follows in the great tradition of range-finder cameras, yeilding beautiful photos from a convenient and easy to use package. enough of the review!

it was my little baby when i got it but anna has become besotted with it. she wandered off into the garden a few evenings ago at dusk and when i went out to see what she was doing i found her over the fence in the neighbour's back yard.

our neighbour recently passed away, and he'd built his house and lived there for about 50 years or so. it's a nz classic - weather board painted a vibrant sky blue. i've always loved the look of it. our little house and his were the original inspiration for my safe little world concept. in fact a picture that i took of his house (which i then drew on) was the first place i used the term 'safe little world'.

anyway, in his back yard he has a little shed - a kind of haven with a comfortable chair, work bench and tools in it. i'd wanted to photograph it for a long time. the place is currently vacant and anna had gone over there and wandered into the shed.

i went over too, and what resulted were some very nice pictures that we took. the golden light of dusk was falling perfectly through the shed door and we were armed with my g10. here is some of what we got... (anna took the first two and i took the second two)

[on the headphones: 'vaka (live in vienna 2002)' by sigur ros. download it free here.]

movie still 4

got movie stills coming out my ears - i'll have to post them more often. this one is from the film 'black robe', the moment just before the huron tribe accepts christianity...

the transcendent nodes of SP08

before i leave well enough alone and stop talking about the semi permanent 08 design conference, i want to mention four moments i found particularly profound - nodes that occurred during the two days of the event and seemed (to me) to transcend the normal talk about design.

it seemed to me that abstract notions, altruism, emotion, passion, love (...) were much more present at sp this year than other years. perhaps as a reaction against the superficial, mechanical, commercial aspects of design, the speakers were expressing 'deeper' desires, flirting around the edges of art, and aiming to express something with more meaning. here are four examples that struck me particularly...

joel gethin lewis talks about hiraeth. joel gethin lewis: an interactivity designer (for want of a better phrase) who combines artistic and technical smarts to create incredible and mind-blowing interactive spaces. to date most of his work has been with uva (see to believe).

as part of his talk, he spoke about returning home to wales, to his roots, exploring the countryside, seeing a rare red kite soaring through the air, and experiencing firsthand 'hiraeth'. hiraeth is a welsh word that means something like 'a sense of place' - connectedness to land and the place you come from. it seems that this experience propelled lewis into a more art-based working method. he is now working exclusively with open-source solutions and sharing his research with the world.

karsten schmidt quotes from judges 5:5. karsten schmidt: a designer (perhaps mad scientist genius) who designs by writing computer code and allowing his code to formulate visual output based on the parameters he programs.

his talk was very philosophical. we said that everything is moving if you look at it long enough - nothing is static. even mountains are moving if you look at them long enough. at which point he quoted judges 5:5, "the mountains melted from before the LORD". actually he quoted "the mountains flowed before the Lord" (maybe his own english translation from german). young's literal translation has it, "hills flowed from the face of Jehovah". his point being that the mountains are moving, you just need to be God to observe it (ie around long enough).

personally i found it very nice that he was using a biblical passage to illustrate his point. he later went on to give us the disclaimer that he actually doesn't believe in God. he said that the randomisation in his work is one reason. my personal take is that his work definitely doesn't imply a lack of God. the randomisation that is inherent in the work steams from source code that he himself programmed (the code itself is not 'chance'). showing, i think, that the 'randomisation' we see in nature could steam from a generating source code programmed by a master programmer.

kate bezar quotes 1 corinthians 13. kate bezar: was a business consultant who chucked it in to follow her passion and create an interview magazine about ordinary people achieving great creative things (called 'dumbo feather, pass it on').

as if one creative quoting from the bible wasn't shocking enough, kate bezar did the same by quoting from 1 corinthinans 13, commenting "i bet this is the first time you've heard the bible quoted at a design conference" or something like that. she quoted, "when i was a child, i talked like a child, i thought like a child, i reasoned like a child. when i became a man, i put childish ways behind me." it was a scripture that she recited en masse as a school girl during school assemblies.

kate's angle was that by starting 'dumbo feather', following this scripture is exactly what she was NOT doing. she equated the business world she was once in to "putting childish ways behind" her, and that starting 'dumbo feather' was rediscovering and embracing a childlike approach.

i can't resist critiquing this. i think it is totally brilliant that she ditched the commercial world for an enterprise like 'dumbo feather'. in fact this is totally compatible with christianity, which (in part) calls for people to favour deeper, more beautiful things over materialism. as it happens, kate has taken the scripture out of context, because the verses immediately proceeding her quotation basically state that there's no point doing anything unless you do it with love. which is an idea she's embraced by starting 'dumbo feather' - she is now using love as a driving force, where love was absent from the grind of her former business consultant life. st paul's meaning in 1 corinthians 13 is that the more advanced way to do things is through love. the bible in no way denigrates a childlike approach to life. jesus himself said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (matthew 18). i think she took a step closer to the true meaning of 1 corinthians 13 when she started 'dumbo feather' rather than a step away.

danny yount's sea anemone. danny yount: a title sequence designer responsible for such things as the opening titles of 'six feet under' and the end titles of 'iron man'.

the finale of sp08 for me was when yount put a picture of a sea anemone up on the screen, and said something to the effect of (and i wish i could remember his exact words), "this sea anemone sits on my desk. when i need inspiration i look at it closely. look at it - it's perfectly designed. God has surrounded us with an amazing creation. so when you need inspiration, look around you."

movie still 3

here i am skiving off from what i said i would post about next (again). here are some movie stills from the film 'control' about the life and death of ian curtis (lead singer of joy division). the film is directed by famous photographer anton corbijn, so you would expect some lovely black and white visuals... (click on 'em to see 'em bigger like)

SP08 (part 2)

day two started with one of the speakers i was most looking forward to - derek henderson. he is one of new zealand's most respected photographers and seems equally at home photographing models in venice as he is photographing the deserted streets of backwater new zealand towns. i wasn't disappointed - he showed us a lot of his work and added anecdotes to each of the images. interesting stuff.

sea design were next. i actually can't remember too much about their presentation - probably due to the fact that i've taken so long to get this review posted, but also maybe because it didn't make a huge impact on me. when i was researching for this post, though, i visited their website: home page = wow. check it (refresh it to see different background images).

then dumbo feather after lunch. kate bezar is a new zealander based in australia - a st cuths girl turned management consultant turned magazine publisher. her magazine 'dumbo feather, pass it on' is an interview magazine that talks to ordinary people achieving great things. kate's story is a classic 'getting sick of corporate world so decides to follow her passion and using all the money she made in the corporate world to do something new and altruistic' story. her talk was based around that theme. i don't mean to sound sarky about it - it was a good talk.

debaser are an australian design agency that specialises in album cover design. they had some nice work and it was interesting to hear about their experiences and the processes of album art.

after afternoon tea was danny yount - i think i might have a new hero. he's a seemingly ordinary guy who ended up in the business of creating title sequences for movies. for me this is fascinating because it often involves typography in movement. danny yount designed the opening titles for a fairly successful tv program called 'six feet under'. his recent work includes the end titles for 'iron man' and 'the invasion'. he has also recently finished work on the new guy ritchie film. fantastic talk.

the superstar of the event and the supposed headline act was stefan sagmeister. he's fairly famous (to say the least) in design circles. he's the sort of guy that people will pay any amount of money to design whatever he likes. that puts him in a whole different universe from most of the people at the conference. he talked us through a project he's worked on called 'things i've learnt' or something like that. it's a famous project that most of us had probably already seen. he didn't seem too worried about the time constraints and was still going when i left half an hour after the finish time.

morning and evening - the second day.

it really was good having the event as two days this year. at the end of the first day i wondered how i was going to absorb another day's worth of info but i was ok after a nice sleep. you run into problems when you put designers in front of a large audience - a lot of them probably never dreamed that they would be hauled away from their macs and placed in front of a vast auditorium of people. but the proportion of speakers that were able to make that transition well was higher this year than the other two years i've been. i think the organisers of this event should be congratulated because they are clearly trying to bring the latest thinking about design to new zealand. that means that we are getting the benefit of a vast amount of cultural capital every time this event is held - and i think this was particularly true this year.

i'm not finished posting about SP - next i'm going to write about some interesting highlights. meanwhile here is some design work from the speakers (in order of appearance):

sgt. james brown gets it on

yes, i know i'm supposed to be posting part 2 of my sp08 review - it's coming. meanwhile here i am getting distracted by yet another triviality.

i get a fair bit of spam through my inbox and take great delight in the sender names that these emails come from - some of them are just brilliant - here are a few i've collected in the past: mauricio lee, consuelo hobson, ernesto mcclellan, ruthie salazar, ringleader e. artifact, hartford v. vestibule, jesus jolly.

great stuff. so you can imagine my delight when this morning i received an email from one sgt. james brown.

normally i immediately delete these things without opening them but sgt. james brown! now that's what i'm talking about. turns out to be one of those 'nigerian' scams. but sgt. jb is determined to quell any fears that i might have about this being non-legit.

to quote sgt. brown: "It’s true that one has to 'be hesitant of such a transaction' but you must know that Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serve to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."

quite a philosopher is sgt. jim. turns out though that this is blatant plagarism. this is in fact a quote from henry miller. how can one trust such a plagariser? and here i was about to assist sarg in his transaction - lucky i checked quoteworld.org first!

and now for the REAL james brown (got it here) (the irony of the fact this appears to be a picture of james brown leaving prison does not escape me):

SP08 (part 1)

for the first time, the semi-permanent design conference was held over two days this year. and that really is too much to talk about in one post, so i'm going to break it up into two with a third part that talks about my personal response.

the day launched with marion bantjes from canada - one of the best speakers first up. she presented really well and showed us some lovely work. her trademark style is lots of curvy lines.

she was followed by design by pidgeon from australia. this was real solid work by david pidgeon with some nice ideas. the session wasn't hugely rivetting from an entertainment point of view and included a lot of discussion about the australian pavillion at the venice benninal.

after lunch it was joel gethin lewis and i was tremendously excited about hearing him after he spoke on behalf of uva last year. this welsh kid is an absolute genius - and i think i might mean that literally. having told us about the work he did with uva for massive attack and the interactive regent street christmas lights, he went on to tell us about his new projects involving utlising open source software in visual art and media. some other things about lewis: he got a job as a game interactivity tester when he was 14, worked for ibm when he was 17, and has a science degree and a fine arts degree.

then it was collider from australia with designer andrew van der westhuyzen presenting. this was fairly well presented and i particularly enjoyed discussion about the work they did for the mtv australia awards which including a very cool photo shoot using high speed cameras.

after afternoon tea we heard from the wilderness and it was blimin' nice to hear some nz voices. this was co-presented by a guy named kelvin who i once had coffee with to talk about an alternative christian arts magazine idea (which as far as i know never eventuated). so it's interesting to see that he's become one of nz's finest designers.

and the day was rounded out by toxi (aka karsten schmidt). this session was a real mind-bender. schmidt does all his design by source code. so instead of drawing something in illustrator or photoshop he writes computer code that draws the object by itself. he is big on creating randomised elements. he was adament that we should all go out and learn how to program so that we could get on that wave. it was also a very philosophical talk and i'm going to put him in the genius catagory too, and maybe even the mad scientist sub-catagory. while it's unlikely that many of the designers there will go out and start creating the way he does, it was nice to have the framework of our brains stretched.

and there was morning and evening - the first day. i'll review day two in the next post.

some images (in order of appearance):

jamie strange let loose in the wild

i'm still procrastinating about posting about the things i was going to post about. but other interesting things keep coming up.

i should have mentioned that we finally finished work on the album art for jamie strange's album - he's had some copies printed up and is unleashing it on the music world as we speak.

i think he has achieved something pretty cool with this album - he's showed incredible determination in seeing the project to this point and deserves plaudits for this. i should be focussing on his work with the album, but instead i'm going to get all egotistical about it and point out my own appearances on the album. apart from working on the album artwork with my esteemed colleague mr roland bart ebbing, i also have a couple of tasty vocal appearances.

jamie gave his album to hamilton student radio station max fm and they have added three of his tracks to their playlist - two of those tracks have me on them... a brief punk vocal on 'rockstar clone' (currently max fm's most requested song) and some spoken word on 'screaming without words'. you can visit the playlist page here. but because it will change one day i've immortalised the moment here (click on it to make it bigger):

and because i know you're anxious to know what words i speak on 'screaming without words', here is a transcript (i wrote them especially for the song):

All the time I thought you knew, compressed by this distorted voice
My silent world drowned out by the city's long low hum, and groans that words can't express
The sound of traffic with our conscious minds
My stream of conscious thought against my subconscious thought
I wrestle with this dark angel morning through night
'Til night fades and is carried away by dawn
All the time I thought you knew, all the time I thought
And here it all begins to fade away
I'm screaming without words to say

i'll post some images from the jamie strange artwork in a later post...

guitar hero

i've got a billion little things in mind that i want to post about - for one thing i got back from the semi permanent design conference on monday, and i want to review that. and i've come across some more star wars stuff. and more cool stuff. and i've got loads of movie stills. i guess i'm just going to have to try and post stuff more regularly.

but instead of posting about any of those things, i'd like to draw your attention to a particularly nice piece of music/video from my friend mark laurent who is a particularly fine guitarist...

here it is now:

movie still 2

here's the second installment of 'movie still'. this time a little bit of kubrick magic, and no matter what anyone says about space odyssey 2001 it is undoubtedly a stunning film visually. i got so lost in the visuals that i only remembered to capture a few frames - but virtually every shot in that film could be captured - especially once the film moves beyond the annoying apeman opening scenes. my favourite shot is the last one below...

20,000 tracks under the sea

i've blogged before about the inane sense of enjoyment i get from watching as the music i'm listening to on my computer appears on my last.fm page.

that enjoyment doesn't seem to have waned in the over two years. so you can imagine my excitement (perhaps) when this morning i hit 20,000 tracks played since joining last.fm in may 2006. that's a fair bit of music listened to (an average of about 25 tracks a day).

my milestone roughly coincides with a redesign that last.fm have just launched. i'm getting used to it but i feel like it is less destinctive now and more like facebook. the functionality is pretty good - an improvement i think.

anyway, here's a souvenir of the moment i accomplished the 20,000 mark (click to enlarge or download it as your desktop wallpaper!)

jewellery

Anna, my wife, has just launched a blog about her designer jewellery line... check it: www.annieblackberry.blogspot.com